🍄 It is utterly forbidden to be half-hearted about gardening. You have got to love your garden whether you like it or not. - W.C. Sellar

The bliss of gardening on my little piece of African soil. A year-by-year record of the progress in my new garden. My "new" garden, started in 2004, is now just "my garden" where my chooks free-range and supply me with breakfast every day..

Go out by yourself, face the wind, hold up your head and thank the Universe for this gardening year.

Hardcover Gardening Journal, available with ruled, graph or blank pages from RedBubble

Tool tip

Properly maintained quality garden tools are a joy to use and can last for generations. And, like most things, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Regularly cleaning and oiling your garden tools will prevent rust, keep them sharper, and allow the handles to stay strong. Start by giving your tools a good scrubbing to remove any mud and grit from the blades and handles. Dry with old towels, then set them aside overnight so they dry completely to avoid trapping moisture. Using a clean rag, apply lubricating oil to both the wooden handle and the metal blade. Rub the oil into the surface then wipe off any excess. The oil will help prevent rust and condition the wood to keep it from absorbing water and prevent cracking. After the handle has dried, apply a second coat of oil to the wood if needed. Tools with fiberglass or composite handles will only need a good cleaning.

Monthly inspiration

Start a Gardening Journal : Keep tabs on your garden. Create a scrapbook using an inexpensive photo album and add your plant tags and sticks to it each season. Then, make it as detailed as you'd like by adding information as to where the plants were purchased and where the plant was located in your garden. Add your own artistic flair with sketches of your garden or photographs.

Winter 2015

Wildlife Tips

PUT UP AN OWL BOX : Owls aren't common garden visitors for most, but if you know they are around, it's worth providing extra nesting sites. General Owl boxes ­ are bigger than ordinary bird boxes. They're shaped according to the needs of the species. Barn owl boxes are large and square, or sometimes triangular, with a ledge outside the entrance for young owls to stand on. Barn owls like to nest in a solitary tree on the edge of woodland, between 3 and 5m above the ground. Keep out cold drafts by facing all owl boxes away from prevailing winds. It also makes it easier for parents to fly to the entrance. If you fix the owl box to a tree, use a strap to keep it in place so you don’t damage the trunk. As with all nest boxes, do not disturb the box for cleaning until you are sure that the young have left. Tawny owls in particular can be aggressive when protecting their young. Don’t be disappointed if your box stays empty for the first year. Birds often choose a nesting site during the autumn, winter or early spring. Leave the box where it is for the winter and it could be a nice dry place for birds to roost when the weather’s bad. Please do not unnecessarily disturb the birds and never remove any eggs from the nest.

Make a logpile in your garden for lizards, frogs and other insects that visit your garden. Don't move the pile too often, you will be disturbing an important habitat in your garden! Spiders and other insects play an important role in keeping the ecosystem healthy and thriving.

If you have the space, also consider a wildlife pond, with shallow edges so that mammals and birds can drink or bathe safely. A wildlife pond offers invaluable refuge for frogs and other water mammals and insects

Leave those leaves! I know many gardeners don't like the 'messy' look of fallen leaves, but they have a lot of benefit to wildlife and your garden. Many wildlife species live in or rely on the leaf layer to find food and other habitat, including toads, shrews, earthworms and many insect species. From a gardening perspective, fallen leaves offer a double benefit. Leaves form a natural mulch that helps suppress weeds and at the same time fertilize the soil as they break down. Why spend money on mulch and fertilizer when you can make your own?

Gardening tips

Cleaning terracotta pots : To remove the salt deposits that form on clay pots, combine equal parts white vinegar, rubbing alcohol and water in a spray bottle. Apply the mixture to the pot and scrub with a plastic brush. Let the pot dry before you plant anything in it.

Be waterwise : •Choose drought tolerant plants •Use plenty of compost •Mulch • Water deeply so plants stay wet for longer. •Water at sunset •Harvest rain water •Use grey water Most gardens have areas that tend to stay wetter than others. Plants with a high water requirement should be planted there, so being observant about garden conditions can really help! For instance: shade areas are often dry because of overhanging trees.

Easy-read rain gauge: Spruce up your rain gauge by adding a few drops of food colouring to the bottom. During the next rainfall, the water will combine with the dye and the water level will be bright red and easy to read.

FEATURED HERB

ARTEMESIA AFRA (Wilde als, wild wormwood) : Where it grows – In rocky mountainous areas of South Africa. This is one of the most popular medicinal plants in southern Africa. For colds, colic, heartburn, flatulence, croup and gout, drink a tea made of 5g of fresh leaves steeped in boiling water for five minutes and strained. To make a bath lotion, add 30-40g of fresh leaves to 2 litres of boiling water. Leave for an hour or two, strain and bottle. Use in bath water to ease haemorrhoids, measles, fever, sores and wounds, rashes, bites and stings. Growing tips – It is hardy and easy to grow. Plant it in a sunny position in well-drained, well-composted soil. Cut back severely in July or August. Roots easily from cuttings.

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The most serious gardening I do would seem very strange to an onlooker, for it involves hours of walking round in circles, apparently doing nothing. ~Helen Dillo

A-Z Listing of South African Indigenous plants

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Profile

Hi,
I'm Maree Clarkson and after moving from Gauteng in December 2017, where I lived for 47 years, I now live on one of the most beautiful coasts in the world, the North Coast in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. I’m passionate about sketching and painting, animals, birds, nature, Moleskine note books, the beach, crystals, succulents, useless information, technology, blogging, networking, my MAC, my Land Rover, positivity, gardening and discovering anything new in life!
Living in Africa is something very special and I am constantly delighted, amused and amazed by the things I see, do and experience. Join me in some of these experiences.
Watercolours are my preferred medium. For me, the unpredictability and uncontrollable nature of watercolour makes it the most exciting and expressive medium of all. Having a certain picture in your mind and then seeing something slightly different, yet wonderful, come to life, is a thrilling experience! With watercolours, no two artists can produce the same result, the paint will just not allow you!

More about me

I've been gardening ever since a child, when I spent time with my father in his vegetable garden. But my fascination with Echeverias started in the 1980's, when my father gave me a pot with five Echeverias, which turned out to be E. imbricata. At first I wasn't much interested in them and planted them in some obscure corner of the garden and completely forgot about them. How great was my surprise when, a couple of months later, I noticed that they had spread and made a beautiful display - I was hooked!

Probably most of us have been in a garden on a particular day and time and felt a rush of well-being - of joy, being recharged, uplifted, a sense of healing, being in tune with the infinite. Gardens can clear away the fog of the noisy, fast, techno world, and the mindless focus on the clutter of trivia. Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace. In a garden one is not growing rare plants and trees… one is making memories… Gardening is one thing, maybe even the only thing, that brings people from all over this world, together. Gardening teaches us compassion - just walk past the ‘nearly’ dead tree every day, pat it on the bark and whisper, “just hold on for one more year”. It really does still serve a purpose - little raptors like the Fiscal Shrike loves the vantage point the dead branches give her and many birds will bask in the early morning warmth of the sun on a cold winter's morning in the very top branches.

Consider what you bring to the partnership and what the rest of nature brings. Gardening as a partner with the rest of nature means we have to let go of control to allow the garden to do its magic. When we allow ourselves to see the garden more in its own terms, to reach beyond ourselves to the garden, then we become more one with it, and no longer standing outside and above.

A soul garden is one where the forces of nature are more powerfully evident than our own power. This is honoured and expressed through plants that regenerate, and are thereby not as dependent on humans for their existence. These are often labelled as weeds. There is a dance between the power of the weed and us. Allowing weeds to grow in your garden is not just a new fashion, which calls for a wild patch alongside tame ones. Wildness is necessary within a garden, it's a connection between nature and ourselves.